Friday, February 5, 2010

Insulting China

Hi. I don't often send out a Friday afternoon email, butI just read this fascinating exchange and realized it wouldgo into the ether if I didn't take advantage of a pretty miserablerainy day and send it to you good folks. You could go fishingwith all the cans of worms mentioned alive and kicking.ed

This is particularly interesting as it does mean that the ObamaAdministrations is making big dipomatic mistakes on purpose.As Putin said a year ago "The U.S. does not make mistakes!"

I assme Hillary's deliberate diplomatic vile nastiness is part of thesemoves insulting China. The only way I see this as normal is for theannoucement of the first open moves of a War Empire, rather thanmaking them through a leach-iike surrogate. suzannedk@gmail.com

Just like Hong Kong, soon enough Taiwan -- the so-called Republic of China-- will be absorbed into China proper. It's a goner. The sheer force ofChina's gravitational pull will draw the island to the mainland. So what,exactly, is the Obama administration thinking?

In what can only be seen as a calculated insult to Beijing, the Pentagon isselling a huge arsenal to Taiwan -- according to *The Australian*, more than$8 billion worth

"60 Black Hawk helicopters, Patriot interceptor missiles, advanced Harpoonmissiles that can be used against land or ship targets and two refurbishedminesweepers." The Obama administration is praising its own retraint forhaving held off on selling advanced F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan as well,though it hasn't ruled out that in the near future, either.

Not surprisingly, China is furious. The Chinese government has officiallyprotested the sale, freezing military cooperation with the United States andannouncing retaliatory measures that apparently will include sanctionsagainst US arms makers involved in the deal, including Boeing and LockheedMartin. Action against Boeing could potentially be devastating to thecompany, which relies on enormous sales of civilian aircraft to Chineseairlines, but it isn't clear how far China would go, say, in shifting itspurchases to European-made Airbus aircraft, for instance.

Writing in the *Times*, Helene Cooper quotes a US official who says,stupidly:

"This was a case of making sure that there was no misunderstandingthat we will act in our own national security interests. Unlike the previousadministration, we did not wait until the end of our administration to goahead with the arms sales to Taiwan. We did it early."

Leaving aside the issue of why Obama and Co. take pride in "doing itearly," what conceivable US national security interest involves selling aweapons package to an island which belongs to China, and whose increasinglyless nationalistic and less independence-minded leaders know will eventuallyrevert to Chinese control? The dwindling number of fierce anti-communistrelics and ultra-nationalists on the island isn't able to stop the processof detente between China and Taiwan, and the successful integration of HongKong into China in the 1990s provides a model for the eventual resolution ofthe China-Taiwan talks.

Making matters worse, after having rebuffed the Dalai Lama in 2009, when hevisited Washington, it appears that President Obama will orchestrate ahigh-profile encounter with the Tibetan leader soon, adding insult to injuryin US-China relations. (The Chinese see the Dalai Lama as leader of anindependence-minded religious cult in China's western province, an analysisthat isn't far wrong, and they believe that the biggest national securitythreats to China's west are both religion-centered: the Dalai Lama and theUighur Muslims.)

The fact remains that China's star is rising, and America's is declining. Toremain relevant, the United States is going to have to abandon itspretension to economic and military dominance in the western Pacific,southeast Asia, and the Indian Ocean, which will soon become a Chinesesphere of influence. China, too, will eventually become a far more importantplayer in central Asia and the Middle East, because of its insatiable needfor oil and natural gas from that part of the world.

President Obama needs China's help in dealing with Afghanistan, whereChina's alliance with Pakistan and its investments in Afghanistan make it animportant part of the diplomatic puzzle in seeking a negotiated end to thathopeless war. Obama needs China, too, in relation to Iran, not to imposeuseless economic sanctions but to provide Iran with diplomatic assurancesand some gentle pressure to move toward an accord over its nuclear program.And, of course, China is central to the confrontation with North Korea. Inaddition, on economics and the environment, China is by far the mostimportant player after the United States. If the Obama administration thinksit can play hardball with China, pressuring and intimidating it to win itssupport for US policy goals, then the former junior senator from Illinoishas another think coming.

Hillary Clinton is already revving up her hawkish rhetorichttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/30/world/asia/30diplo.html on China's Iranpolicy. Last week, during the Afghanistan conference in London, Clintonslammed China over Iran, warning Beijing that it would face diplomaticisolation if it doesn't cave in and support sanctions on Iran. And Clintonsaid outright that China's policy in the Middle East is built around itsconcerns over the region's (and Iran's) oil. Addressing China's leaders, shesaid:

"We understand that right now, that is something that seemscounterproductive to you, sanction a country from which you get so much ofthe natural resources your growing economy needs."

As if the United States doesn't base its own Middle East policy on the factthat the Persian Gulf is the center of the world's oil supply!_______________________________________________Rad-Green mailing listRad-Green@lists.econ.utah.edu

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Swing Riots Concert July 17th

In a Benefit Concert for FolkWorks

July 17th at 2 PM

at the

Tropico de Nopal Gallery, in Los Angeles, 1665 Beverly Boulevard, East of Alvarado.

SwingRiots is an LA Jazz Gypsy Balkan Klezmer Folk ensemble with six versatile fully digitized members who recreate the brilliant music of two-finger Belgian Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt— quite a feat, in that it takes them only sixty fingers to accomplish what Django did with two. Perhaps that’s why the word genius is so often found within two syllables of Reinhardt’s legendary name.

But if you close your eyes, it hardly matters; you can drift back in time to the sweltering erotic nights of Paris’s Left Bank in the 1930s, when Reinhardt was remaking the landscape of modern Jazz, and having to relearn the guitar after suffering major burns in a 1928 fire that changed his life and modern music forever. Without the use of the third and fourth fingers on his left hand he played everything with just the two he had—and that proved to be enough.

Ed Pearl has done a bit of his own reshaping of the musical landscape of Los Angeles, as the creator of the legendary folk music club The Ash Grove in 1958, and had Django Reinhardt not passed away in 1953, he would surely have graced the Ash Grove stage as well, along with Muddy Waters, Bill Monroe, the New Lost City Ramblers, The Greenbriar Boys, Phil Ochs, Mance Libscomb, Lightning Hopkins, Flatt and Scruggs, Mississippi John Hurt, Jackie DeShannon and Ry Cooder.

Now Ed has embarked on a new venture, catching up with lost time as it were, and will present SwingRiots in his new summer concert series sponsored by Ash Grove Music (www.ashgrovemusic.com).

It will be a doubly special event, since it is a benefit concert for FolkWorks, LA’s free and only folk music magazine, now in its tenth year of continuous publication, covering the waterfront of LA’s sometimes bewildering variety of folk related solo performers, dance and instrumental groups and festivals, as well as national touring artists that come through town.

FolkWorks (www.folkworks.org) was just honored this past May with the Topanga Banjo-Fiddle Contest Music Legend Award for 2011, and needs the influx of funds from this extraordinary concert to keep the presses rolling, as it tries valiantly to beat the odds that have made magazine publishing a quixotic and oft-times heroic endeavor.

So support the Ash Grove, support FolkWorks, and enjoy an unparalleled afternoon of world music from the Lost Generation that these wonderful Los Angeles musicians have rediscovered, mastered and made their own. For this musical experience of a lifetime SwingRiots will be joined by vocal duet Jess Basta & Christine Tavares, formerly of VOCO in a variety of Yiddish and early jazz standards. Don’t you dare miss it! --Ross Altman